


The Shaman

by Geli



Series: Jungle Stories [3]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 02:10:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geli/pseuds/Geli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim tells Blair a bit about his life with the Chopek and his relationship with Incacha.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shaman

**Author's Note:**

> The Jim/Incacha takes place in the past, Jim remembers it. I have to thank my Betareader MoonShadow for helping with this.
> 
> The tribal life and traditions described in this story are based on ethnological texts about Amazonian tribes. The same goes for the shamanic rituals and believes. I did a lot of research, went through original texts to be able to create a realistic back ground for Jim's time in Peru with the Chopeck warriors.

Jim was at Rainier to wait for the beginning of his stakeout. For a week now he'd been on the night shift and had spent the late afternoon hours with Blair in his office. It was better than to stare alone at the walls in the loft. Blair didn't mind his friend's presence even when he had a lot of work to do. Jim always made himself comfortable and read a magazine or a book. 

It was still summer and the small room was cool. Dust motes danced lazily in the few rays of sun that reached the room. Blair looked up from the papers he was grading and saw that Jim had tilted his head in this peculiar way, his gaze far away. He was concentrated on listening to something outside this room. 

"What is it? What do you hear?" Blair asked curiously. 

Jim snapped out of it, embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming. 

"It's a lecture about shamanism. On the floor above us, I think." Jim made a vague movement with his hand. 

"Yeah, that's a course. You can take a course to become a shaman." 

Jim frowned and Blair had to smile. He could feel another argument coming on. 

"Does that work?" 

"Depends on your point of view." 

Blair wanted to know what Jim thought about it. After all, Jim was one of the few people who could say he'd once had his own personal shaman. Blair knew the only way to get Jim to talk about personal stuff was to provoke him. 

Jim bit immediately. "Ah! I see, after exploiting the land, the people, the art, now they are exploiting the religion too." 

"C'mon Jim. They don't see it like that." 

"They never see it like that." Jim growled. 

"It's not real shamanism, or at last not what the native shamans once were. It's a mix of various beliefs and ideas." 

This was a sore spot for Jim. He had seen first hand small tribes at the verge of extinction and had even lost beloved friends to the greed and selfishness of so-called civilization. Blair remembered vividly how Jim had lost it when he couldn't carry out the burial rituals for Incacha. Back then, Blair had been convinced it had been a reaction out of grief because Jim was not a religious man at all. Later he had realized that Jim had meant it seriously, wanting to respect Incacha's beliefs even after his death. 

Jim calmed down and rubbed his forehead. 

"Yeah, what that guy is teaching has nothing to do with what Incacha did." Jim admitted. 

"Yeah, I know." Blair said softly, careful not to break the mood. 

Ever since Incacha had died, Jim had not spoken about him or about their life together. They had been lovers and Jim had gotten a very good insight into the Chopec shaman's spiritual life. 

Jim had felt himself gravitating towards the shaman from the beginning. Maybe it was because Incacha could speak a bit Spanish. Maybe it was because he was intelligent and full of humor. Mostly though, Jim thought, it was because Incacha never treated him like the freakish outcast as the others did in the beginning. When had gotten an infection in his leg during a hunt and had been convinced he was dying, Incacha had kissed him and Jim had accepted. Becoming his "wife" was far better than living alone without protection. Even when he could get a hut and a wife of his own. 

"Incacha took me in, made me his third wife." He said softly. 

Jim looked up expecting to see Blair smirk at the admission but he only seriously nodded. 

"I see. So you were under Incacha's protection and you had a status in the tribe even if it was a low one." 

It was the first time that he had ever spoken about this to anybody. When he had come back from Peru he had told the therapist that he had been adopted into Incacha's family. She had assumed that Incacha had been an elder shaman and had accepted the explanation. He sure as hell didn't want to tell the military shrink he had a homosexual relationship with a native medicine man. He knew Blair would understand, at last a bit, how different his life had been in the jungle. 

"Have you ever been with a man, Sandburg?" 

"No, you? Besides Incacha, I mean." 

"No." 

It hadn't interested him. Sex with Incacha had been part of the whole package, it belonged to the different life there. When he had recovered from the fever, Incacha had come to him. Inexperienced, he had lain still and let the older man do everything. Incacha had stroked and kissed him gently to arousal, then covered him with his body and driven his hips into Jim's until they both came. After that, Incacha fucked him several times a week and Jim had slowly become more of a participant. He excited his lover with skill and the help of his senses. Incacha liked the playful foreplay and went with it, always topping his lover. 

"Was he a good husband?" Blair asked quietly. 

"I think he was. At first, he didn't do much. But when my senses awakened and rainy season started, we snuggled in a hammock and made out for hours." Jim smiled at that. 

He felt uneasy speaking the words out loud, as if the memory would disappear or be tainted. There were so many memories Jim kept buried, but bringing them out here seemed to be easy. This was Blair's world, here he could find understanding without prejudice. 

"I had to shave my hair off. Some even volunteered to rip it out for me." Jim suddenly said. 

Incacha had urged him to shave his body hair off as the shaman found it disgusting. Miraculously, the entire tribe treated him better after that. His skin became more sensitive and Incacha could never resist fondling his smooth white skin. 

"They thought you were an animal with all the hair." Blair explained. 

"You would be an ape then." 

Blair grinned. 

"No, I was treated like a demented toddler and everybody wanted to sleep with me because I was different. Trust me, the tribe did not think of me like Clark Gable, some big, white hunter, romantic hero. Most of the time I was scared that something bad would happen to the tribe and they would hold me responsible for it and kill me to soothe the angry spirits." 

That was one of the bad memories, the fear of breaking an important taboo and being murdered for it. The women who came after him, forcing themselves on him, had not understood his reluctance. His time in the military had him prepared for the awful food, the gruesome rituals and fear and pain but not with the emotional turmoil he found himself experiencing. 

He tried to shake the unpleasant memories and return to Incacha, the shaman. 

"I remember Incacha's first seance. It was for me. After a couple of weeks, I had kind of a breakdown. My body just gave out. Incacha decided that I had done something wrong, probably eating the wrong food or doing the wrong thing during the hunt and the spirit animal world had taken revenge and stolen my soul." 

Blair snorted. "That's classical. You find this all over America and Obugria." 

"I swear it was frightening to watch. He was so pumped with drugs I was amazed he could move at all. A normal person would probably have been killed by it. He kept himself up and did his rituals and songs although he was completely gone, higher than a kite. He talked with the spirits, flew with them over the jungle in search of my stolen soul. His body was empty then, he was dead and spirits lived in his body." 

Jim stared at a spot on the floor. The realization that Incacha was really dead now seem to swamp his senses. Blair's mind wandered. Jim had been regarded as dead and without his soul his body would have died quickly. The near death experience, as part of the shaman's life, was usually misinterpreted by the western world which had a different conception of body and soul, life and death. 

"After long discussions and a lot of noise, he declared that a bird I had killed had stolen my soul in revenge. Incacha made me promise never to hunt this kind of bird again. And I swore that I would never eat that bird again." 

Blair smiled. 

"Well, Incacha brought my soul back and went into his hut to sleep it off. Next day he came to my bed and decided that I was okay again and that I shouldn't lay around here. I knew he would be mightily pissed if I insisted of being ill and crawled into a hammock and told everybody I was fine, just tiered from the ordeal. They accepted that and left me alone." 

"Was that the only seance for you?" 

"No, there were several over the time. He had even a spirit song for me." 

"Really? How did it go?" 

Jim grinned. It was a silly song and made no sense. To Blair's shock, Jim began to sing it. Only a few lines in a monotonous, murmuring way. Blair didn't understand a word. 

"Could you translate that for the non speakers, please." 

"It's about Enqueri with the long legs and being thin and a funny lover." 

"Nothing about your senses or your blue eyes?" 

Jim shook his head. "No, it would have made the animals envious about my abilities. I had to be careful not to offend them." 

Blair nodded. Being different wasn't welcomed. The tribes were egalitarian societies, nobody was to stand out and there was to be no competition, no individuality. Obeying all the rules and taboos was the duty for everyone. Otherwise, the whole tribe had to suffer the consequences. Jim's senses made him valuable but a danger and a target at the same time. 

A knock at the door brought them out of their musings. A TA carried another load of files to Blair's desk with a smirk. 

"I think it's time for me to go. Henry wants me to get there early today." Jim apologized. 

Blair was disappointed. He wanted to hear more of the strange love story of Jim and Incacha. The tall man slipped out the door after muttering goodbye and Blair stared a long time after him. He wasn't sure why he was so fascinated by this relationship. Maybe because it seemed so impossible. He had met Incacha and had seen him together with Jim. He had a hard time imagining his stoic, grim friend submitting to the gentle touches of the solemn shaman. 

Still wallowing in the feelings dragged to the surface with his memories of Incacha, Jim drove listlessly to the apartment were the Cascade PD was surveying a smuggler. For the rest of the night, he couldn't distance himself from the lure of recollection. While Rafe took the watch with binoculars, Jim settled on the couch and let himself wander back in time. To Incacha and their lovemaking. 

It had been weird for him in the beginning but everything had been weird then and the caring, gentle touches of another warm body was something familiar, something he could lose himself in. Later, when he became the sentinel of the tribe and lead the war against the rebels, things had been different for him. He was no longer the weird sextoy of the shaman but a feared warrior in the eyes of the tribe. 

His love for the other man grew but the conflicts did too. The more independent he became from Incacha, the more they argued. During their lovemaking, though, Incacha remained on top. Jim never questioned this. 

And it confused the hell out of Jim that he wanted Blair to submit to him. 

* * *

 


End file.
